Longmont woman's new book chronicles relationship with her parents

Lorrie Caplan-Shern, 58, author of "Giving Birth to My Parents," poses for portrait with her mother, Blanche Caplan, 86, in her Longmont home on Wednesday.
(
Greg Lindstrom
)

Longmont resident Lorrie Caplan-Shern's new book, "Giving Birth To My Parents," was published earlier this year. The book chronicles the evolution of Caplan-Shern's relationship with her parents, Blanche and Bernie Caplan.

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Lori Caplan-Shern's book, "Giving Birth To My Parents," is available at amazon.com and at summerlandpublishing.com. It retails for $14.95. A portion of proceeds from books bought through Summerland Publishing will benefit St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

LONGMONT -- The realization came at a Michael Bolton concert.

Three years ago, Lorrie Caplan-Shern took her mother to see the singer perform in Atlantic City, N.J.

"We're sitting in the third row, and my mom screams, 'Michael!' and he goes, 'Lights,' and then he puts the light on her, and he goes, 'Yes?' And she goes, 'Hi, I'm Blanche, and I love you!'" Caplan-Shern recalled. "I know I've always had chutzpah, but I never, ever, ever was so embarrassed. And then I realized, hello, where do you think you get it?"

It's those sorts of little revelations the 58-year-old Longmont woman unearthed about herself after launching a project to study a pair of very familiar subjects: her own parents, Blanche and Bernie Caplan.

Over a decade -- from 1995 until her father's death at Christmas 2005 -- Caplan-Shern spent thousands of hours on the phone with her parents and visited them in Philadelphia six to 10 times each year, including the entire month of July.

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"I was home a lot, really watching them and wanting them to have this last chapter of their lives be extraordinary, fun, where I would put things in their space and create events they never experienced," said Caplan-Shern, a watercolor and acrylic artist, playwright and life coach.

She details that journey in her new book, "Giving Birth To My Parents," which she describes as both a memoir and a self-help book for baby boomers on how to find the kind of closeness with their own Depression-era parents. The book was published Jan. 1 by Summerland Publishing.

Caplan-Shern wants her book to encourage aging baby boomers -- the fastest growing segment of the population -- to take time to develop a stronger relationship with their parents. It's a connection that's often strained because of different cultures and a lack of compassion, she said.

"See them, really begin to see them," she advised. "Forgive them for all the things they could do and couldn't do and stop blaming them and stop making them wrong because nobody gave them a handbook on how to be a parent."

Halfway through the project, Caplan-Shern, who does not have children, decided on the title, "Giving Birth To My Parents." Especially after her mother's health deteriorated -- she suffered four strokes in four years, including two since October that took away her ability to walk -- the title became a metaphor for the new roles in the mother-daughter relationship.

Her mother, Blanche Caplan, 86, now lives at the Carillon at Boulder Creek, a retirement community in Boulder. She said the closeness of her relationship with her daughter is partly because "she understands me on the elderly level."

"In her 60s, she's more like my mother," she said.

Growing up in an upper-middle class, predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Philadelphia, Caplan-Shern describes her relationship with her parents as a dichotomy; they were "both unconditionally loving, yet highly critical," she wrote in the book.

The relationship settled into a friendship when Caplan-Shern moved to Manhattan in the 1980s, but it wasn't until her father's quadruple bypass in 1995 -- an event that she said put her face-to-face with her own mortality -- that Caplan-Shern began to pick apart their relationship.

Part of that stemmed from her own aging.

"As I approach 60, I'm now in communication with all my friends, 'Going, oh my God, do you know what it's going to be like to be 80 and 85 and 90?' No one is aware of that. They have no concept. I'm around it all the time," she said.

In the book, Caplan-Shern describes a moment when she and her husband, Stephen Shern, took a hard look at their naked selves in the mirror and took inventory of the age spots, lines, wrinkles and crows feet. In other words, they were getting older. And they certainly aren't alone. The number of people 65 and older is expected to climb to 72 million, or 20 percent of the country's population, by 2030. By that same year, Boulder County population estimates place seniors at nearly 27 percent of the population.

With more and more baby boomers entering their golden years, Caplan-Shern also hopes her book will encourage all generations to have more compassion and respect for seniors and their wisdom.

"I'm just really committed to having a world that works where the elderly are honored and celebrated, noticed and recognized. I'm committed to having a world that's filled with so much love and kindness that it really just helps us grow up with love and kindness," she said.

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